"Kael Ashenvale. You stand before the High King of Velkaris to answer the following charges. Charge the first. Unlawful incursion into the warded forests of Drakencrest sovereign territory."
"Get better wards."
The Herald's jaw tightened. He did not look up. "Charge the second. Employment of a practitioner of proscribed dark magic within Drakencrest borders."
"In fairness, he employs himself. I provide the ambiance and the travel budget."
"Charge the third. Assault upon two persons within Drakencrest territory resulting in grievous bodily harm."
"Grievous is generous. Both of them walked home. Ish. Ask my men who harmed whom. One is concussed with a broken nose. None of them will be able to father children."
Maddox's hand, resting on the arm of the throne, curled once around the obsidian and released. He said nothing.
"Charge the fourth. Abduction and unlawful restraint of a person under Drakencrest protection."
"Restraint is a strong word. She walked. There was a leash involved, yes, but she wore it with such dignity I honestly forgot it was rude."
A muscle in Ryker's jaw twitched. Once. He did not react beyond it.
"Charge the fifth. Attempted murder by strangulation of the aforementioned person."
"Now that one I will contest. If I had been attempting, we would not be here. I was negotiating. She negotiates with her boots. I negotiate with my hands. Different dialects of the same language."
"Charge the sixth. Threatening of the person and mate of a member of the Drakencrest royal house."
Kael's head tilted.
His iron eyes brightened a fraction, the faintest lift at the corners of his mouth, the look of a gambler who had just watched the card he had been waiting for finally come up on the table.
Bingo.
The room registered the mistake at exactly the same moment Kael registered that the room had registered it. The scroll had just confirmed what he had walked in here hoping to confirm, and not one face in the gallery was pretending otherwise.
Kael's smile widened by the full inch he had been saving.
"Who is she?" he asked the room, conversational. "Because I have been asking for a full rotation of the sun now and not one of you has done me the courtesy of an answer."
The elders along the east wall did not blink. Blair gave him a smile that had teeth in it and exactly zero information behind it.
"No?" Kael's grin did not waver. "Fine. I will work it out on my own. Out loud. Stop me if I get warm."
He rolled his shoulders inside the dragon-iron and began to pace the small radius the chains allowed him.
"She moves faster than some dragons in human form, which is impolite of her. Those dragons were slow, but still. She has the balls to punch dragons in the face with a frame that should snap under the recoil. She drops my soldiers in a tight little minute and then apologizes, which is honestly the part I keep coming back to."
He paused, glancing at Ryker, then at Maddox. Neither gave him a reaction.
"Her shift consisted of a blinding white light. I've never seen a white wolf before or one that glows like the sun."
"You should tell her to turn that setting off when running from a dragon."
His eyes went back to Ryker. "When I had my hand around her throat in the forest, your second in command walked into a clearing he had no tactical reason to be in and spoke to me like I had just put my boot on his wife."
Ryker's hand twitched but he didn't move.
"She's one of your mates. Assuming Ryker, based on his reactions. But royal family," Kael contemplated. "She is too pretty to be related to you, Maddox. I mean that with full offense."
"Charge the seventh," the Herald continued, voice harder now. "Conspiracy to traffic high-blood women from Drakencrest territory for purposes unknown."
"Unknown to you. I know exactly what the purposes were. I would tell you, but then we would be here another hour and I have places to be."
"Charge the eighth. Collusion with a practitioner of proscribed arts in the summoning of unwarded passage across a sovereign boundary."
"That one I will cop to. The passage was excellent. Ten out of ten. I will be leaving a review."
"Charge the ninth. Treasonous conduct against a sitting monarch of the Draconic Accord."
Kael stopped pacing.
He turned to face the throne fully.
Maddox spoke for the first time. "Do you."
The voice of a king who had already decided an outcome and was offering the other party a final, courteous chance to acknowledge it.
"I do, little brother."
The room did not react.
"I am going to save us all some time," Kael said, and lifted his cuffed hands in a small, polite gesture toward the Herald. "I am not accepting the charges. I am not disputing them either. That would imply I acknowledge the authority of this court, which is a whole philosophical conversation I am saving for my memoirs."
He turned back to Maddox.
His iron eyes found the throne across the obsidian floor and held, and the smile on his mouth was no longer amused. It was the smile of a man who had come into this room for exactly one piece of information and had spent the last nine minutes watching the room hand it to him for free.
"I came to the forest for a reason," he said. "Not because my mage's divinations went sideways. I have information about what she is, who she is, and why she can do what she can do. Information this room does not have and cannot get without me. You do not want to kill the only person in Velkaris who can actually help her."
He inclined his head toward the throne.
"Thank you, little brother. For the confirmation. That is all I needed."
Maddox stood.
He did it slowly, the way a man stands when he has decided that the distance between himself and another man is about to become zero. His gold eyes had gone from sun to molten.
The doors of the throne room slammed open.
Every head turned.
A dark mage stood in the threshold.
Cowl up. Hands raised. The air around him bending wrong in threads that made the torchlight stutter, bending the light the way it had bent in the forest. He had walked through wards that should have reduced him to component parts, and he had done it without breaking stride.
Kael's smile came back.
"Ah. Punctual. Good man."
The mage spoke one word in a language no person in the room recognized.
The throne room exploded with movement.
Four elders along the east wall rose from their seats in the same breath, and the ceremonial blades at their hips came out of their sheaths in the same breath, and they turned on the elders beside them in the same breath. The obsidian floor was painted in a fan blood before the rest of the room understood what was happening.
The throne room split down the middle, loyal against turned, and the sound that filled the vaulted ceiling was the specific clean music of dragon-forged steel meeting dragon-forged steel at speeds no human ear had been built to track.
Blair was already out of her chair. One of Maddox's guards stepped in front of her.
Two of the traitors went for the throne. Sterling came across the dais in a red blur.
A traitor climbing the throne steps lost his sword arm at the elbow, and then lost the argument about whether the rest of him got to stay upright, and Sterling was already moving to the next one before the first had finished understanding what had happened to his geometry.
Ryker took the throne's left flank. A traitor elder came at him with a blade meant for the king's ribs and received, in exchange, the full unhurried attention of a dragon who had spent the last thirty seconds fantasizing about exactly this opportunity. The elder went down. Ryker did not stop to verify.
Across the room, Maddox was already off the dais and moving towards Kael.
Kael was already moving toward the mage.
The dark mage lifted both hands and the air in the doorway folded inward on itself the way it had folded around him in the forest, a door opening that was not a door, and Kael hit the threshold at dragon speed with his cuffs still on and a grin on his face that said he had planned this down to the second.
Maddox caught the back of his cloak.
The fabric tore. Kael laughed. The door-that-was-not-a-door closed, and the mage was gone, and Kael was gone, and Maddox was left standing in the threshold with a fistful of torn black cloak and a throne room behind him that was three-quarters corpses and one-quarter survivors and entirely, catastrophically, no longer what it had been ten minutes ago.
Silence.
The kind of silence that came after something had broken that could not be put back.
Maddox closed his fist around the torn fabric.
His knuckles went white and eyes burned gold.
The dragon in his chest, which had been leashed through every charge and every retort and every "little brother," came all the way up to the surface and did not go back down.
He turned to face his throne room.
Ryker was breathing hard. Sterling was wiping his blade. Blair had a cut along her cheekbone. Twelve elders were dead. Four of those were the traitors. The other eight were the ones the traitors had sat next to at breakfast this morning.
"Seal the Keep." Maddox's voice filled the vaulted ceiling without raising. "Every gate. Every window. No one in or out, Ryker."
"Already done."
"Sterling."
"Rounding up the traitor families now."
"Our throne room wards just failed along with the forest ones. That needs to be fixed now."
"On it."